I did it! (Of course, there are chunks of canon dialogue here upping the word count.)

Anyway, Katniss and Finnick have both had their breakdowns topside, and Haymitch informs Coin that she's going to be recovering Peeta and Annie.

Chapter EightTwo hours after the disastrous trip topside, Plutarch tells me that the team has left. Boggs is leading it, with a woman named Mavis Jackson as his second. Gale will lead the team into the prison while Boggs and Jackson work out a complex security disruption. Winifred and Wilhelmina Leeg volunteered, and, shockingly, so did Messalla, whose training is only slightly better than mine. ("He's in better shape otherwise, though," Plutarch tells me, "and after working with Cressida for five years, he knows how to take orders.") There is a slight click, the Plutarch's voice changes a little. "Right now, the plan is to send Gale and three others into the maximum security wing to collect Peeta and Annie, and Johanna if we can get in. Janus Fells -- Enobaria's brother -- will meet them with a security pass, but it won't take anyone very long to figure out what's going on. The other half -- the Leegs and Messalla -- will find a place to break off and go to minimum security to recover Portia, the preps, and Effie. That's off the record until they're actually here."

"Thanks," I say.

"I know you may not believe this, Haymitch, but I like Effie, and I'm sorry that I didn't believe you about keeping her safe. I really thought the Capitol wouldn't bother with her."

There's nothing to say to this, and I don't bother trying to think of something. I wait for Katniss to wake up, and break the news to her. It takes her about thirty seconds to realize that Gale is going in, and that both he and Peeta could easily be dead by the end of the day. She's furious that they left without her. I don't tell her that she was barely coherent, let alone prepared to go into danger. She wants to do something. Anything.

I go to Plutarch in Command to see if he can think of something. He and Beetee are hunched over video monitors, watching the District Twelve propos.

"That's it," Beetee says when I bring up Katniss's request. "That's what we've been looking for."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Plutarch frowns. "We've been worried about keeping back any... shall we say, common response."

"Common response?"

"People will defend their homes," Beetee says. "In the Capitol the same as in the districts. There's really no love lost between Snow and the Capitol -- you know what he's like -- but armed soldiers from the enemy camp coming in and breaking into their prisons? It would be a disaster if the Capitol citizens decided to interfere. We've been thinking they need a distraction. The footage we got in District Twelve is good, but I think we can do better. Especially if Finnick helps. He's got a few stories that ought to keep the techs too interested to block us."

"You want Finnick to talk about... what Snow does to him? On television? No. You can't ask him to do that."

"I can, and I will," Plutarch says. "It's time to break the myth that the victors are pampered." He glances at Beetee, then back to me. "But neither of them could perform this morning. Will they be able to keep it together now?"

I consider it, then sigh. "If they think they're doing it to help in the war, and it'll help get Peeta and Annie back... yes. But don't put that on Finnick if there's anything else to do. There's going to be a time after the war, and he's going to want a regular life."

When I get back down to the hospital, Katniss has woken Finnick up. He's eager to help in any way he can. I don't tell him exactly what Plutarch has in mind. We get them made up again and go back up to the surface.

Cressida positions Katniss and starts filming, and she tells a story that I suspected, but never knew for sure. "When I first met Peeta," she says, "I was eleven years old and I was almost dead."

I sit, just off camera, and listen. I knew there was something between them in the past, something that she felt she owed him for. That he took a beating from his mother to give her food from the bakery is something that I should have guessed, I suppose. Katniss has since woven that act into a narrative about him that is far beyond any romantic, idealistic notion he may ever have held of her. I hope that he sees it before he's otherwise occupied with being rescued, because I doubt she's ever adequately expressed it to him. I also hope they hear it here in Thirteen, because, idealized and romanticized or not, it is who Peeta is. What he did for her in the microcosm, he did for them just as spectacularly, taking Snow's brutal beating as just as he took his mother's punishment.

I suspect there's more to it, something that even now, she's holding out on. Something that maybe wouldn't make sense to a person outside Katniss's head. But the bread is enough. She follows this with a lukewarm political statement which won't hold anyone's interest nearly as well.

It's not long enough, and I know it.

Plutarch comes over to Finnick and me while Katniss catches her breath.

"Haymitch, I have to ask. I told you I would. The story Katniss told is great, and the little old ladies with cats will be retelling it for years, but they were never going to interfere with a rescue anyway. We need to get everyone talking. Paying attention to anything but the prison."

Finnick is nodding, fiddling with a piece of rope. "I'll do it. Of course I'll do it. I've been collecting secrets for years. Now I've got a chance to use them for a little payback. "

He starts to go over toward the filming area. I go with him. "You don't have to do this," I say as he takes Katniss's seat.

"Yes I do. If it'll help her." He takes his rope and puts it in his pocket, adopting the laid-back, easy attitude he usually has for the cameras. "I'm ready," he says.

I step back and sit down on a piece of rubble. Katniss sits beside me. I give her shoulder a squeeze and she looks comforted by it.

Finnick doesn’t waste any time with preliminaries. As soon as Cressida tells him to talk, he says, "President Snow used to... sell me... my body, that is. I wasn't the only one..."

Katniss's eyes widen, and I can tell she's putting a few things together. She looks at me sideways, but says nothing.

Finnick begins his litany of secrets. Some of them, I knew. Others, I never had reason to.

Adamaris Brinn -- whose money supported Snow's early ambitions, and who later became head of the Capitol's Debtors' Relief Society (an ironic name, since it generally occupied itself with sending debtors to jail) -- has made use not only of Finnick, but of several other victors of both sexes. Her money comes from jewels mined in the Outdistricts by the very debtors she imprisoned... from mines she has never reported to anyone, in flagrant disregard of the law. Her workers, she forces beyond all human capacity. Most of them die young. She once gave Finnick a raw sapphire.

Claudius Templesmith frequents prostitutes a good deal younger than Finnick was when he started.

Snow's minister of information (in other words, his chief propagandist), Corvinus Eveleth, likes to frolic in a diaper and pretend to be drinking from a bottle while engaged in other acts.

Egeria Daby, head of the genetic engineering lab, has done things with mutts that I really wish Finnick would stop describing.

Snow's alleged "son," who disappeared eight years ago, was actually an illegal clone, who failed to actually duplicate Snow in any way beyond the physical. ("I met him," Finnick says. "A decent person. Of course he 'disappeared.' Along with his wife, leaving their daughter in Snow's care. But we'll get back to Snow," he promises.)

General Hadrian Fife and his sister are somewhat closer than is expected in polite society.

Latona Holton -- longtime mistress of Snow's Chief Peacekeeper, Manius Cadwell -- burns down buildings in the Capitol and watches the flames while having whoever she has ordered in for the night. These buildings have not always been empty. If Cadwell is free, he watches.

And on, and on. Political murders. Arrests made under duress. He tells all of it in a soft, compelling voice. It's not sensationalized. These are very obviously simply things that he has been told over the years, or been made to participate in. Tales told in the dark to a Capitol pet who knew better than to share his knowledge. I know many of the people he mentions, and I know the names of all of them after twenty-five years dealing with the Capitol. I held none of them in high esteem, but some of what he brings up even manages to surprise me.

Cressida doesn't interrupt him with questions. She just lets him speak.

"And now," he says, after half an hour of this, "on to our good President Coriolanus Snow. Such a young man when he rose to power. Such a clever one to keep it. How, you must ask yourself, did he do it? One word. That's all you really need to know. Poison."

I can't say that Snow's habit of poisoning enemies is a surprise. He tried to do it to me this winter, and would have succeeded if Effie hadn't forced me to take a double dose of detox pills before the party at the presidential mansion, because she didn't want me embarrassing her or my district by being drunk in such a prominent place. What I didn't know was how widely he'd used it, or that he'd developed an immunity to many poisons over the years, which kept suspicion off of him as his rivals conveniently disappeared under questionable circumstances. Everyone knew that their deaths were a little too convenient, but no one could prove a thing. And of course, once Snow was in power, it didn't matter anymore. He clawed his way up over their bodies, from Gamemaker at the age of seventeen to the presidency by the age of forty-three, and has held it for fifty years by brutally eliminating any threat, including his own cloned "son."

I have no idea how long Finnick has been talking when he finally smiles faintly and says, "Cut."

Cressida and her crew (minus Messalla, of course) run in with the footage, and Plutarch leads Finnick off with a congratulatory handshake.

I am left with Katniss, who looks stunned. He hands are clenched into fists. "Is that what happened to you?" she asks.

At first, I think she means the poisoning, then I realize what she's really asking: Did Snow sell me?

I shake my head. I've never told her anything. I have assumed that she knew about my family, but that might not even be true. Katniss keeps to herself, and is not a great one for gossip, even with her mother, who certainly knows the story. "No," I say. "My mother and younger brother. My girl. They were all dead two weeks after I was crowned victor. Because of the stunt I pulled with the forcefield. Snow had no one to use against me."

"I'm surprised he didn't just kill you."

I was, too, once. I wished he would. But that's not Snow's style. After I refused, during my first year as a mentor, to entertain one of his cronies, he had his Gamemaker kill my tributes in the arena. I know now that neither of those poor, malnourished, none-too-bright kids would have made it through, anyway, but at the time I blamed myself. I had already started drinking at home after the death of my family and my girl, Digger -- Dannel Mellark and Ruthie Keyton (in an unknowing preview of their offspring) had been trying to make me stop. But when I lost my first tributes, drunkenness became my full-time state, with varying degrees of sobriety only rare islands in the sea of white liquor. I became a useful threat for young victors. Remember that clever, handsome boy who won the Quell? Look what he's turned into. Is that what you want for yourselves?

I tell Katniss that Snow had no leverage on me.

"Until Peeta and I came along," she says.

I don't bother countering it. From the time I knew they were going to make a fight of it, I also knew that, for the first time, Snow had people he could use against me. I'd long since given up any friends. Ruth gave up on me when her own life got too complicated, and she blamed me for Dannel's short-lived drinking problem after her marriage. Dannel stopped coming around when Mirrem forced his nose out of the bottle. I dealt with people in the Hob, but I never got close to them. The only people I was close to were the other victors, who had their own ways of dealing with him, and of course, Effie. From five years after my first run-in with Snow until she walked out of the Viewing Center the night before everything went crazy, there was always Effie. But until we blew the arena, her Capitol citizenship protected her.

That, and that I treated her like garbage. I wish I could say that was a great scheme to keep her out of danger. It wasn't, but it may have had that effect.

Of course, by the time I was thirty, I was drunk, dirty, and getting a pot belly. I doubt anyone was actually pining for my company.

I'm called to Command. Katniss goes off to join Finnick. I don't know what they're doing to take each other's minds off things. In Command, we contact the hovercraft where Boggs's team is approaching the Capitol. They'll arrive at three o'clock (15:00, in District Thirteen terms, which I refuse to use). A man on Gale's team is fitted with a camera for the assault on the maximum security wing (Gale is starting to be known, so they'll want to get footage of him). Messalla will actually be filming the minimum security wing, though we're all maintaining the polite fiction that everyone is going to stay together.

It seems like it might work, until 2:45, when a red light goes on in front of Plutarch. He grabs a second earpiece. "Galerius?" he says. "What? He's where?"

I look up. "What is it?"

"It's Peeta," Plutarch says.

"What about him?"

"They've moved him to the training center. He's on the twelfth floor in the old apartment. Galerius is treating him for the same reaction he had before."

Coin frowns. "Can we reach him there?"

"Yeah," Plutarch says. "It'll actually be an easier extraction, but that means splitting the team into two teams to recover Annie." He looks at me. We both understand what it means: The team was already going to split, but now, they won't be able to get the prisoners from minimum security.

Effie. Portia.

I close my eyes, but I can't react without letting the rest of Command know that we never planned to follow their orders in the first place.

"Can it be done with half-teams?" Coin asks.

Plutarch nods, but doesn't elaborate.

Beetee goes out to the broadcast room to start the distraction. On screens out there, they'll be watching what we filmed this morning, forced into the Capitol broadcast. In here, the big screens fill up with a live feed of the rescue.

The hovercraft lands at the lakeshore, where two of Plutarch's junior Gamemakers meet them with vans. They pick a rendezvous point and a secondary point, then Gale climbs into one of them; Messalla into the other. On board the hovercraft, Jackson orders medical teams to prepare for the prisoners, then they rise up and cloak again.

"Looks like your friends are busy again," Messalla's driver says, pointing up at the big television screen in City Center, on which Katniss is giving her brief political statement. People are looking up with vague curiosity. I can only wonder what they'll do when Finnick comes on, and I won't get a chance to find out.

Gale's driver is nowhere as friendly as City Center, and there is no public screen. They approach a wall on the outside of the prison, and Gale taps his earpiece. "Now," he says.

At this, Boggs's team on the hovercraft jumps into action. A fourth screen comes to life, showing the security feeds from inside the prison. Enobaria's brother has placed canisters of knockout gas through the prison, and these are blown, sending clouds of white fog through the corridors. Peacekeepers and other guards fall to the ground. The Gamemakers put a bomb in the abandoned Viewing Center, large enough to cause havoc and get local lawmakers involved in a response, but not anywhere that would kill innocents. That would make the propo useless. Finally, they manage to blow the power to prison. How they get around the redundant systems, I don't know. I don't care.

Gale puts on a gas mask, then shoots a grappling hook to the top of the wall and starts to climb.

In the city, Messalla and the Leeg sisters jump from the van, which is now being buffeted by rescuers trying to make it to the Viewing Center. In the background, I can see people in the City Center, trying to run. The Gamemaker they're with, who Plutarch identifies as Bassianus Orman, ditches the van and leads the way to the Training Center. The image jumps around as Messalla runs.

On the other screen, I see Gale force open the door to the prison wings. A Peacekeeper runs out, wearing his own gas mask, and barely avoids being shot by holding up his gloved hand, on which he's drawn a very crude mockingjay. "I'm Janus," he says. "Come with me. Not everyone is knocked out."

Given that I don't know what these prisoners are in for -- they could be political prisoners or they could be serial killers, for all I know -- I agree.

Gale is swept down another staircase.

Here in the lower levels, the gas didn't penetrate as far, and the guards are just sluggish. The kid carrying the camera shoots one of them.

"Don't shoot too much," Gale says. "The noise will bring more."

I look over at Messalla's team. The Leeg sisters have broken into the Training Center's equipment shed, and, wisely, are arming themselves with quieter weaponry -- spears and knives. One of them (I can't tell them apart) actually grabs a trident.

The Gamemaker Orman has a key to the emergency staircase that runs up the side of the building. The tributes can't get to it -- wouldn't want them making a last minute escape -- but the Gamemakers would be able to retrieve them in case of a fire, so that they're not dead before they're on camera.

They run up the stairs, double-time. I can hear Messalla breathing heavily. One of the Leegs -- I'd guess the one he was in the jugs with -- says, "Come on, soldier! This isn't where I want to hear the heavy breathing!" She grins and runs easily up more stairs.

When they reach the top, the other sister holds up her hand and puts a finger to her mouth to indicate that they should be quiet. She puts a listening device to the door. I don't even know where in the quarters it will open, and I've lived there a month a year for a quarter of a century.

Orman swipes his card, and the door swings open into the kitchenette area, on what seems to be a blank wall behind a cart. The Leegs jump out, guns drawn, and head out into the apartment. Messalla and Orman follow.

"It's solid," Plutarch says. "He's in his room. The doctor just left him."

I tell them where Peeta's room is -- presuming he's in the same one, but even if he's not, it's next door to the other bedroom -- and they head over. The door is closed. Messalla and one of the Leegs spread out to cover either side of the door. The other Leeg stands across the hall with her gun drawn. Orman sweeps his card again and the door opens.

Peeta is alone. He is lying on the bed, mumbling at the ceiling, saying things I can't begin to understand. He is covered with bruises and naked. Deliberate burn marks march down his torso. His arms and legs are still twitching lethargically. His eyes are vacant when he looks at his rescuers.

"You're not going to get him back down the stairs," I say. "Plutarch, can we get the hovercraft to the roof? That's easy access from our level."

He nods, and gives the order to Boggs. I relay it to Messalla.

It may be easy access to the roof, but even emaciated, Peeta is hard to carry. He's bigger than any of them.

I close my eyes and think about the apartment. There has to be something. My mind keeps bringing up an image of Effie -- Effie in the dining room, laying out a beautiful spread for dessert.

A messy spread.

I open my eyes. "There's a heavy duty plastic sheet in the dining room, behind the sideboard. It won't hold him long, but you can make a stretcher of it for the walk to the roof."

"Read you," Messalla says. He goes to the dining room, pulls the sideboard out without much care, and finds the plastic piece that Effie used to protect it. He carries it back. Peeta's legs dangle over the end of it, but it's the best we can do. They shred his sheets to tie him to it securely and head for the roof.

In the prison, Gale has made it down to a long, dismal corridor lined with heavy metal doors.

Less sluggish guards down here have put on gas masks, and as soon as they're in, they have to flatten themselves against the wall to avoid gunfire. Gale takes out a guard with a shot to the head. "Give me the card," he hisses to Janus. "Then run. Like you just managed to get away from us."

Janus nods and fishes for his security card. He also peels off the glove with the mockingjay on it, and shoves it into the hands of the kids with the camera. He runs for the others. "They're everywhere!" he yells. "We have to retreat!"

I don't know if it would have worked if he hadn't spoken. I don't know how itchy the other Peacekeepers' trigger fingers are.

All I know is that one of them screams, "COWARD!" and in a blast of blood and bone, Janus Fells drops to the ground.

I look at Plutarch. He looks determinedly away from me.

That kid was the brother of a victor. I don't know whether Enobaria will take it out on the Capitol for shooting him, or the rebellion putting him this position. Either way, I have a feeling she's not going to be neutral after this.

In the haze of gunfire, it's hard to see anything. Gale is firing carefully, not wasting ammunition. He takes out two more guards. The others manage to subdue more and rush off to guard the entrances to the hall. The one with the camera follows Gale, on Coin's orders.

Gale starts opening doors.

Most of the cells are empty. He gets nearly to the end of the hall when he opens the door and swears loudly.

The camera gets a glimpse around the door. Johanna Mason is shivering at the back of the cell, naked and beaten. Her hair has been chopped off none-too-carefully, taking chunks of her scalp with it. She is holding a chain that descends from the ceiling, snarling at Gale and the camera.

"We're getting you out of here," Gale says.

"That's not on the mission, Soldier Hawthorne," Coin says mildly.

"Screw the mission, look at her."

Coin purses her lips. "Be careful of your tone, soldier."

"Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry, but we have to get her out. It's not taking any extra time, except for arguing about it."

Coin sighs, as if she has been given an impossible ultimatum. "Very well," she says. "Bring her. We'll see to her as well."

Gale goes into the cell, then Johanna's eyes widen. She hisses through clenched teeth, "Gun!"

"What?"

"Gun!"

Gale lowers his gun, apparently thinking that she doesn't want it pointed in her direction.

"Idiot!" she yells, and lurches forward. There is a blur of motion as she grabs the gun from the cameraman, then a huge, deafening noise when she blows a hole in the Peacekeeper, left for dead after the firefight, that had been crawling up behind them. She turns on Gale. "Keep me armed," she tells him. "And give me someone to shoot at."

I didn't know Janus was going to die until he actually did. I figured without anything to prove he was with the rebels (that's why he gave Gale the glove), he might be a guy on the inside. But then when he shouted, I knew -- they'd fire.

Plutarch is learning to understand reality, at least a little bit, and Gale is still the guy who looked after Katniss's family when she was gone. I'm glad to get to know them better. :D

First and foremost, I apologize profusely if this comment seems intrusive, particularly coming from a lurker. Secondly,I'll come back later to comment on the chapter; but for now, are you all right? I remember reading in some earlier journal entries that you were living in Boston? Most of these were in your HP writing era, so you may very well have moved, but...with everything that's happened today, I still wanted to ask if everything was well on your end.

Since the news broke for me early this afternoon, I've wished so much that there was anything to say beyond sincerest condolences that could make any of it better, for all the people it effected, whether or not they were in Boston at the time and feeling that everything was so terribly inadequate. There are so many places that have left the sort of imprint you described with Boston for me, and I can't even wrap my head around any of them being desecrated like this.